The Council has been awarded £7.37m Additional Restriction Grant fund since November 2020 to support businesses severely impacted by coronavirus restrictions. The Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy has provided the council discretion on how it can use these funds to support the needs of local businesses and the economy. Following a number of discretionary grant rounds, £630k of the £7.37m budget remains.

The Cabinet Member for Economy and Place decision 04 May 2021, “Additional Restrictions Grant - business recovery programme” set out proposals for a Festivals and Events Grant to support existing public events and festivals that will take place within the 2021/22 financial year.

Due to the dynamic Covid-19 situation, circumstances have changed and many events planned for 2021 will either have now occurred or have been cancelled due to the situation. There is also an opportunity to reflect arrangements on other grant schemes, simplify the criteria and remove subjective assessment requirements or further post payment spend monitoring.

In consideration of the above, this decision proposes to vary the criteria to support festivals and events as follows:

• Operate the grant as a discretionary grant with broad criteria and application process. Making grant awards to those events meeting the criteria. Eligible applicants would be given discretion on the use of the award and there would be no subsequent monitoring process on the use of these funds (the covid-19 fraud/post payment checks will remain).
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• Eligible applicants will have the discretion on the use of the funds within the government set criteria.
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• Applicants will need to be either a business, a charity, or town or parish council. Constituted community groups will be able to apply through one of the above eligible applicants where they are an active partner within the group.
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• Events will need to take place following the receipt of the grant either within 2021 or 2022 calendar years. If the event or festival does not go ahead by December 31st 2022, unless due to the reintroduction of further COVID19 restrictions, any grant awarded will be clawed back from the applicant body.
• Events supported will have a minimum attendee requirement of 500 which will restrict very localised events.
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• Events must be held in Herefordshire and all members of the public must be able to attend (via a reasonable charge if necessary) at all times.
• A previous event of the same nature must have been held by the applicant during the three calendar years prior to 17 September 2021.
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• Event organisers who hold more than one event per year will be able to apply for more than one event providing that each is materially different. For example an event organiser holding a food festival would not be supported for holding another food festival but would be supported for holding a walking festival or arts fair.
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• Applicants can apply for no more than 2 grants per organisation.

In addition to the above criteria the following types of event are specifically excluded:
o Award ceremonies
o Business expos or trade fairs
o Wedding fairs
o School or village fetes
o Regular street markets, auctions, car boot sales, or agricultural markets
o Sports matches, race meetings or sporting competitions

A one off grant will be made in accordance with the following criteria:

• Events or festivals evidencing less than 1000 attendees will receive a £5,000 grant payment;
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• Events and festivals providing strong evidence of between 1001 and 5,000 attendees will receive a £10,000 grant payment.


• For events and festivals providing substantial and verifiable evidence of over 5,000 attendees a grant payment of up to £50,000 will be made.
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• For events in this last category the size of the grant payment will be determined by:
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o the number of attendees;
o the strength of evidence provided for numbers of attendees – for example demonstrable ticket sales being very strong evidence, head counts or estimations being weak evidence;
o demonstrable commitment to holding an event before the 31st December 2022 – for example booked venues, performers, released promotion, other associated costs;
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o a definable and demonstrable need for support in the form of an identified viability gap or an expansion of the previous event in terms of number of attendees, length of event, enhanced facilities or attractions.

Wherever possible evidence should be based on the last time the event was held during the last three years. For most applicants this should be the last pre Covid19 year (anticipated as 2019 for most annual events).

The Economic Development Manager is delegated authority to conclude the suggested eligible items of expenditure, eligible applicant organisations, and any final detailed administration of the scheme.

A webpage with the criteria for the scheme and an online application form will be developed which will follow the precedent set by the Additional Restriction Grant Guidance and previous discretionary schemes. Guidance will be provided to applicants and criteria terminology will be explained.

All applications will follow the application process and applications will be checked that they are correct, accurate, and that applicants meet the stated criteria and the ARG assurance requirements. The Economic Development Manager will award grants to those that meet the requirements in accordance to the grant criteria. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application.